On Wednesday this week (1-16-08) I read a poem that I had just written which was a form I don’t normally use. It turned out well, and several of you students seemed to like it, too.Since one of the ideas I had for this site was to share ideas, styles, forms you may want to try out or experiement with, I decided to provide information here about how to write a pantoum. And, ‘cuz I’m just so totally awesome (smile and nod at the crazy lady, kids!), I wrote a pantoum using lines that I have jotted down during our poetry club meetings: lines written by all of us. Now, if you recongnize a line that was yours, and I altered it or just seem to have not gotten in “right,” you can let me know. I may change it but may not. Some lines I ‘tweaked’ a bit to make them fit within the poem overall. And, although some of the lines may have been your creation, the poem itself is mine; right? So write your own!!! And then share it with us here and/or at club meetings.A pantoum is a poem written in stanzas of 4 lines each. Some explanations of pantoum form also say that the lines should rhyme, but that is not the way that I was taught the form by Joan Logghe (Poets in the Schools, New Mexico Culture Net). The “trick” of the pantoum is that the second and fourth lines of one stanza become the first and third lines of the following stanza:
first stanza—all ‘new’ lines
A-Jack and Jill went up the hill
B-To fetch a pail of water
C-Jack fell down and broke his crown
D-And Jill came tumbling after
second stanza—two repeated lines, two ‘new’ lines
B-To fetch a pail of water
E-Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
D-And Jill came tumbling after
F-Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
[I'll post this format example one in a "comment" or "post" connected to this page for those who want to see it all the way through.]
Ultimately, each line is used twice. Since the first and third lines of the very first stanza aren’t repeated lines, they get repeated at the end of the poem. I believe that the “official” order is that the first line becomes the last line of the poem and the third line of the poem is the second line of that last stanza (the lines that would otherwise be new). However, Joan Logghe said that we could flip that order, and I have also seen the final stanza be some other arrangement of the lines from the previous stanza which are due to be repeated and the 1st and 3rd lines from the opening stanza. The recommendation from Joan was also that the poem should be at least five stanzas in order for there to be “enough” to develop as a poem, feeling, image, experience…
OK, I know, it’s getting a bit long, but I want to share some of my process of writing this with you guys, too. I think many people avoid poetic forms with rigid or semi-rigid structures out of their discomfort with how such poems end up when you just start writing at the beginning of the poem and then go until you hit the end of it. When I write–and this goes for essays and long papers and other things, too–I rarely start at the beginning!
If you want to know how I went about writing this poem, look for the post/comment that contains my explanation.
The lines for the poem came from my scribbled notes about YOUR writing in the last couple of months (and some from Manuel and me, too). I tried to use at least one line from each person who’s shared poems in meetings, but I had some lines that I hadn’t scribbled names next to, and I know there have been times that you may have shared and I didn’t manage to write anything down. I apologize if I wasn’t able to get your voice into this pantoum. I promise, there will be plenty of opportunities for more group-type poems. And I may even do more like this.
Now go read: “Hidden Treasures are Everywhere”
Pantoum Format/Structure
first stanza—all ‘new’ lines
A-Jack and Jill went up the hill
B-To fetch a pail of water
C-Jack fell down and broke his crown
D-And Jill came tumbling after
second stanza—two repeated lines, two ‘new’ lines
B-To fetch a pail of water
E-Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
D-And Jill came tumbling after
F-Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
third stanza-two repeated lines, two ‘new’ lines
E-Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
G-All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
F-Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
H-Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
fourth stanza-two repeated, two ‘new’
G-All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
I-Mary had a little lamb
H-Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
J-Its fleece was white as snow.
FINAL stanza-all lines are repeated lines (two from previous stanza, two from the first stanza)
I-Mary had a little lamb
C-Jack fell down and broke his crown
J-Its fleece was white as snow
A-Jack and Jill went up the hill
“Hidden Treasures are Everywhere”
[a pantoum poem by Julie Hasted, created from lines/ideas shared in
SFHS poetry club sessions]
Talk about creativity, my infidelity
Drifting through monkey-bar spaces
Hidden treasures are everywhere
I forget in which pocket I kept my secret
Drifting through monkey-bar spaces
I write poems on flower pebbles
I forget in which pocket I kept my secret
Lost between pages of useless work
I write poems on flower pebbles
Wailing a melody to the stars to save us
Lost between pages of useless work
Try to fit in and try to fit out
Wailing a melody to the stars to save us
In time with the heartbeat of exhaustion
Try to fit in and try to fit out
Desolation pulses through my veins
In time with the heartbeat of exhaustion
Primal echoes skip, shattering lake’s glassy surface
Desolation pulses through my veins
Each wrinkle, another reminder of regret
Primal echoes skip, shattering lake’s glassy surface
No distortion; only an illusion
Desolation pulses through my veins
While my inner demons are doing push-ups
No distortion; only an illusion
I try to swallow self, but gag at the taste of bitter vengeance
While my inner demons are doing push-ups
A dove cries olive oil on my palm
I try to swallow self, but gag at the taste of bitter vengeance
One wink of diamond-bright clarity
A dove cries olive oil on my palm
Blurring details yet fine-tuning delicate intricacies
One wink of diamond-bright clarity
Raining me into existence, anew
Blurring details yet fine-tuning delicate intricacies
A smell as sweet as a newborn’s giggle
Raining me into existence, anew
Talk about creativity, my infidelity
Smell as sweet as a newborn’s giggle
Hidden treasures are everywhere!
My process as I wrote the pantoum poem “Hidden Treasures are Everywhere:”
First, I flipped through the pages of my 2 main notebooks and wrote down phrases which I had scribbled down as you guys shared your poems over the previous couple of months. When I was nearing the bottom of the back side of the page, and feeling like that should be enough, I saw that my notebook had a quote there (one of my notebooks has quotes every few pages). The quote on this page was, “Hidden treasures are everywhere.” I decided that it seemed like a fitting title for this poem that was sort of a “found poem,” and I decided that I wanted the poem to END with that line.
[FYI--A found poem is a poem which is made completely or primarily from lines, phrases, words which the poet has "found" elsewhere: a book(s) that you read, newspaper headlines, advertisements, PA announcements, whatever. It is the poet's choice of lines/phrases to use, and the poet's arrangement of those ideas that make the work a poem, that make it original, and that give it the desired meaning.]
In order to END with the line about hidden treasures, I knew that it would also need to be either my first or my third line–that’s how pantoums work. I didn’t want the poem to be too much like a ’sandwich’ with this line for the first and the last, so I decided to use it as the third. Next, I looked through my compilation of lines and ideas and chose three others that seemed to go fairly well with that one. From those three, I chose one that seems almost introductory or thematic to the whole collection to use as the first line.
After that first stanza was done, I copied the 2nd line as the first line of my next stanza and the fourth line as the 3rd line of my next stanza. Then I scrolled through the collection again to find the ideas that wanted to join them. Each time I read through the two pages of OUR lines and ideas in order to select for the next stanza, I also thought about which other lines might make decent pairs and whether or not some of the lines seemed to fit into a scheme or progression of any kind. By the third stanza, the poem was becoming somber. I knew that with a title about hidden treasures, and trying to end with that idea, it would make more sense if I could work the poem back around from our pain and sorrows to the treasures that we find (often as a result of those sorrows). As I scanned through the collection of lines for the remaining stanzas, I kept that idea in mind.
In the end, I didn’t use all of the lines I wrote into my list–that’s usually how writing is for me, but I save all my brainstorm stuff for other opportunities. And I didn’t worry about counting stanzas–you use as many as you need/want to use.